“A cute bot can also get people to do things they normally wouldn’t. Alex Reben, an engineer turned artist and another alum of the MIT Media Lab, has been playing with the power of robotic cuteness ever since he designed Boxie for his master’s. Like HitchBot, Boxie used cuteness as an engineering workaround. Robots have a hard time climbing stairs, so Boxie asks humans to carry it up them. To get humans to go out of their way to help a machine, Reben made Boxie cute, combing through the literature to find the optimal proportions — wide eyes, big head, slight smile, childlike voice.” – Josh Dzieza